8 Key Recruiting Metrics And How To Measure Them

As a recruiter, what kinds of recruiting metrics do you look at regularly? Are you monitoring any metrics at all?

If you want to streamline the recruitment process and see the best results from your efforts, metrics matter. Read on to learn more about the importance of measuring recruitment metrics and discover the top metrics every recruiter should keep in mind.

Why Do Metrics Matter?

When you collect and analyse your business’s recruitment metrics, you gain a lot of valuable insight into your current hiring processes.

Monitoring the right metrics teaches you about the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy, as well as how efficient it is. You’ll find out about the types of people you’re attracting with your job ads and how expensive (or inexpensive) your recruitment efforts are.

This data can help you to improve your budgeting efforts, change the way you write job ads, and mix up the places where you advertise open positions.

Top 8 Metrics to Start Measuring Today

Are you convinced that you need to take your company’s recruitment metrics more seriously? If so, the next step is to make sure you’re measuring the right data points.

Here are some of the most important ones to keep in mind:

1. Quality of Hire

Quality of hire describes the value that a new hire provides to your company. Specifically, it looks at how much each new hire contributes to the company’s long-term success.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re a part of or how desperate you are to bring on new team members. You shouldn’t be focusing solely on filling seats or adding warm bodies to your staff.

You need to also think about the quality of each new hire and what they bring to the table.

Most recruiters understand why the quality of hire is an important metric. However, they also don’t understand how to measure it.

Quality of hire may seem like a subjective measurement, but it shouldn’t be. You and your team should take the time to identify the specific factors that constitute a quality hire. Then, you can determine whether or not each new hire meets those qualifications.

The following are some specific factors you may use to determine a quality hire:

• Consistently hitting sales targets or other goals
• Consistently creating quality products
• Skills that have been developed or improved over time
• Amount of time spent with the company
• Amount of time it takes to reach maximum productivity

2. Source of Hire

Source of hire refers to the percentage of hires who entered your pipeline from each recruiting channel your company uses — job boards, employee referrals, direct sourcing, etc.

Measuring this metric may show you that you don’t need to use a particular channel anymore because it doesn’t generate a lot of interest. It may also let you know that you should place more of an emphasis on a different network moving forward.

Two of the easiest ways to measure the source of hire for your company include:

• Tracking links: These links help you see where a candidate is clicking through to access your job application.
• Candidate surveys: Simply ask candidates where they saw your job posting — within the application or via a survey when they reach the end of the recruitment funnel.

Both of these are viable options that can help you to refine your recruitment process in the future.

3. Time to Fill

Time to fill describes the number of days that it takes for a company to find and hire a new employee.

Generally speaking, the less time it takes to fill a position, the better. Leaving vacancies open for weeks or even months at a time gets expensive for your company and leaves you short-staffed longer than you (and your other employees) would like.

When you take the time to calculate your average time to fill metric for various roles, it’s also easier for you and your team to estimate how long it will take to fill a vacant role in the future.

Time to fill is best measured from the first time someone makes contact (typically at the application stage) to the time that they accept the job offer.

The average time to fill in the UK is 27.5 days. For high-demand roles, though, or highly specialised positions, the time to fill may be longer as it takes more time to find a qualified and experienced candidate.

4. Cost per Hire

Cost per hire (or CPH) tells you how expensive it is for your company to recruit and hire new employees. If you’re looking to bring down recruitment costs or need help budgeting, this is an essential metric to start measuring.

To calculate your company’s cost per hire numbers, start by calculating internal recruitment costs and external recruitment costs.

Internal recruitment costs include:

• Talent acquisition team salaries
• Employee referral bonuses
• Hourly salary of those who conduct interviews

External recruitment costs include:

• Job advertising costs
• Recruitment agency fees
• Recruitment software subscription fees
• Reimbursement for candidate travel expenses

Once you’ve tallied up these expenses, your next job is to divide that number by the total number of hires during a set time period. This will let you know how much it costs, on average, to hire a new employee.

5. Hiring Diversity

Employee diversity contributes to increased engagement and productivity, improved morale, and more innovation in the workplace. If you’re not careful, though, your hiring process could be turning people from diverse backgrounds off from applying to work for your company.

When you take the time to measure hiring diversity, it’s easier to determine whether or not you have issues that are contributing to a lack of diversity within our company. For example, maybe your company has biased interview practices that turn away people of colour or people of a specific gender, or maybe your job advertisements use non-inclusive language.

Demographics surveys are generally the best option for measuring hiring diversity at your company. Send out demographics surveys to your employees to find out how many people at your company belong to specific identity groups. You can then measure these numbers against industry benchmarks, internal diversity targets, and other important numbers.

6. Interview-to-Hire Ratio

Interview-to-hire ratio refers to the number of candidates a company must interview, on average, before making someone a job offer. For example, if you conducted 15 interviews before extending 1 job offer, your interview-to-hire ratio would be 15:1.

Measuring the interview-to-hire ratio helps you to gain more insight into how long it takes to fill a vacancy. It gives you an idea of how many interviews you and your team will need to conduct (and how much time you need to plan to set aside).

To calculate your company’s interview to hire ratio, start by finding the number of unique offers that were extended during a specific time period. Then divide it by the total of number applicants interviewed and multiply that number by 100.

7. Offer Acceptance Rate

In addition to calculating and monitoring the interview-to-hire rate, you need to monitor your company’s offer acceptance rate. This ratio compares the number of candidates who are offered a job to the number of people who accept.

If your company has a low offer acceptance rate, there may be an issue with your offers being too slow or uncompetitive with other companies’ offers. If your acceptance rate is high, that shows that you’re making offers that people can’t refuse.

To calculate your company’s offer acceptance rate, find the number of offers accepted, then divide it by the number of offers extended. Multiply that number by 100.

8. Candidate Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score (or NPS) is a metric that’s often used to gauge consumer satisfaction or employee satisfaction. However, it can also be used to gauge candidates’ satisfaction with the hiring process.

Calculating candidate NPS helps you to gain more insight into how others view your company’s hiring process. This will let you know if you need to make any changes.

To measure candidate NPS, you just have to ask one question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this recruiting experience to a friend or colleague?”.

Calculate the percentage of candidates who gives answers that range from 1 to 6. Then, calculate the percentage who gives an answer of 9 or 10.

From here, subtract the second number from the first. If your score is above 0, that’s considered “good,” and if it’s above 50, that’s considered “excellent.”

Final Thoughts on Measuring Recruitment Metrics

Now that you know more about the importance of collecting and analysing recruitment metrics, it’s time to start making some changes. Keep this list of essential metrics in mind so you can gather essential data and learn more from your recruitment initiatives.

If you need more help with the recruitment process, start using Udrafter today.

We eliminate the need for campus recruitment, career fairs, and other time-consuming recruitment efforts. Our open marketplace helps you to diversify your talent search and find quality candidates in no time.